Monday, March 28, 2005

Blair needs to come clean on Iraq

This is where the issue of trust turns. In his desperate need to oblige America 'for what may indeed have been an honourable misconception of his country's interests' Blair bludgeoned the machinery around him until it gave him the answer he wanted. This is absolutely clear in the evidence that was submitted to Lord Hutton about the way the September dossier was compiled. If you read all the emails between John Scarlett - then head of the Joint Intelligence Committee - the Secret Intelligence Service and Campbell, there is no doubt about the nature of the impulse which drove these communications.' As I was writing this,' says Alastair Campbell in an emailed critique of the dossier to John Scarlett on 17 September, 2002, 'the Prime Minister had read of the draft you gave me this morning, and he too made a number of points.'